


And a Void to Swallow you Whole

by AcierGlace



Category: The Losers (2010), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, General Night Vale Oddities, M/M, an alien army from outer space, faintest background Mad Max Fury Road allusions, more pre-slash than outright slash, not a true blend of three fandoms, what if cougar was carlos the scientist in an alternate world gone weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 20:25:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4450976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcierGlace/pseuds/AcierGlace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen's not going to apologize. Vaguely implying that The Scientist was actually a murderous double biding his time to send them all through some nightmarish portal was nowhere near as bad as the things Steve Carlsburg said on average. But something hinky was going on in Night Vale, and it wasn't just the aliens trying to invade Radon Canyon. </p>
<p>Or the Citizens of Night Vale would like Jensen to apologize before the weather destroyed their eardrums.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And a Void to Swallow you Whole

“Apologize to Cecil, Jensen,” Pooch shouted, holding his palms over his ears as the weather played. It sounded worryingly like the latest mission they'd been sent out through the scrublands for, the high-pitched whining, shrieking chants, and the rhythmic explosions as they'd blown the invaders back through Radon Canyon. “If the Pooch has to listen to one more weather report-” 

“I have nothing to apologize for!” Jensen had his own hands over his ears, but looked desperate to finish whatever he'd been hacking his way through before the weather. 

The weather abruptly cut off, and Cecil's mild tones carried on, making another pitch about Hiram McDaniels for Mayor at the behest of Hiram himself. 

Pooch cautiously took his hands away and reached out to smack the back of Jensen's head. 

“Remember what happened to Telly? Jensen, do you remember what happened to Telly the barber?” 

Jensen's face twisted, straddling the line between gleeful and unrepentant. Pooch smacked him before he could open his mouth again. 

“Telly had to move to Desert Bluffs, Jensen.” He paused to shudder and wipe the grimace off his face before scowling at Jensen again. “Desert Bluffs.” 

“I know. But I'm not apologizing. He shouldn't be so sensitive about it.” Jensen resettled, watching Pooch warily as he pulled the laptop back towards him. “It's not like everyone else wasn't thinking the same thing.” 

Pooch sighed and held up his hands. He backed away from Jensen and all his crazy. “All I know is if Roque and Clay get back before you clean this up, you're going to be living in the mine shaft, man. And you know Roque will cut the HBO.” 

“Sheriff loves Veep too much to let him!” Jensen called out to Pooch's back.

Pooch waved him off, adjusting his balaclava over his face and slipping down the aisles of fishing poles and deep sea diving equipment for the side door. He'd done his part. If Jensen chose to ignore it, well, no one couldn't say he hadn't tried.

-X-

“You need to apologize to Cecil, Jake,” Jenna said, leaning against the open widow and deliberately keeping her eyes away from the hunched figure just inside the bushes. “No one says you can't have an opinion, but you did not choose an appropriate time or place.” 

The figure under the bushes flinched, but nothing was said, so Jenna assumed that whatever Jake had said wasn't actually important enough to relay.

The radio, which Jenna usually left on, though at a low volume to not disturb the Faceless Old Woman's tv time, hissed and crackled, skittering back and forth on the counter in time to the highs and lows of Cecil's voice. She'd long given up trying to pin it in place, just built a corral with her pans to keep it from lunging at the toaster.

Her radio had once been an obedient and fear-stricken machine, subjugated like all Jensen electronics and appliances through techniques passed down the family line. They either obeyed or were destroyed. But Emma had latched onto this one like a particularly adorable non-radioactive puppy, decorating it with Rainbow Dash stickers and painting it an eye-catching yellow. 

She didn't want to initiate Emma until she'd at least completed her last year of the Summer Reading Program. Destroying something you nurtured and loved came much easier when you got to practice in the Public Library first.

“If we have to re-calibrate Hogarth, you're the one who has to sacrifice one of yours so she can build her own. And she'd only settle for Natasha.” Jenna pushed away from the window, guessing that the secret police officer in the bushes wouldn't be offering any advice. 

“It's about to make a break for the stove,” the Faceless Old Woman said from somewhere to Jenna's left. “And you need more lactose-free milk.”

Jenna sighed and grabbed one of the steak knives from the drawer, approaching the radio with a gleam in her eye and completely finished with Jensen's entire mess.

-X-

Emma thought the entire thing was ridiculous. 

Everyone at school had started giving her a wide berth after everything happened, but Tamika Flynn didn't seem to care at all, so there was one good thing. The constant shadow of secret police following her from location to location seemed to be the primary reason, but she heard some people muttering about Jake and Cecil and the Situation.

“Does it really matter?” Tamika asked, startling Emma from staring at the sidewalk as they walked to school. “Everyone knows how crazy Cecil is about the scientist. He should have expected something. But nothing's happening to you, you know.” 

“Yeah,” Emma agreed, after a moment. They stopped at an intersection to watch for anyone with stop sign immunity and hurried across. “But it's family. You don't leave family.” 

“You don't,” Tamika said. Emma bumped her shoulder companionably. 

“Want to come over after school and help me build a new Hogarth?” 

Tamika faltered a little, eyes widening and almost missing a step up the school stairs. She recovered quickly, shoulders moving back, chin lifting, and a dark flush rushing over her cheeks. But she didn't hesitate once as she reached over to take Emma's hand. 

“That'd be cool.” 

Emma smiled at the ground and laced their fingers tighter together. Sometimes, Jake was really smart and had good advice.

-X-

Jolene had reached the end of her patience with everyone in the secret police. Most of the officers spent their time muttering about the Situation and gossiping through the volunteer line. Without the vague, yet menacing government agency, Clay, Rogue, and several other higher ups in the secret police food chain riding herd on the town, everyone suddenly turned into the nosiest busybodies. 

And thought that since she was married to one of the officers directly in Jensen's division, she would have the juiciest and most up to date information. If one more nursing student approached her to ask about anything not medically relevant, she'd demonstrate exactly why they went through staff nearly as fast as the radio station went through interns. 

Of course, with all the townspeople coming in with wheat and wheat by-product related sicknesses, she didn't have much free time in the first place, so this nonsense eating up all her time wasn't going to be tolerated. 

With that thought in mind, she parked in the empty lot outside the sporting goods store and gave a stern look to the people loitering outside the radio station and casting suspicious looks in her direction. She smiled at them, holding each person's eyes until they grew uncomfortable and looked away. 

She ignored the harsh, wailing sound the door emitted as she entered the store, several officers milling in the store in plain clothes pushing shopping carts and staring at crossbows, relaxed as they realized it was just her and not a suddenly athletically-inclined resident snooping. 

“Jensen in the back?” she asked as she breezed through the aisles and the past the younger officers. She took the silence as confirmation.

Behind the register manned by a single bored teenager, snapping gum and flipping through a magazine, there was a doorway with flimsy plastic strips intended to curtain it off. The real base of operations was a series of stainless steel tables, cordoned off into work spaces and arranged by hierarchy. 

Pooch, Jensen, Roque, and Clay had a table all of their own at the back of the room, gloriously decorated in gleaming knives, small engine parts, and more laptops than any other station. At the obvious point of pride was a teal blue coffee machine and maroon mini fridge, and immediately to the right was Jensen. 

He didn't notice her approach until she was right behind him, reading over his shoulder enough to recognize he was updating the firewalls on the City Council website. She dragged her fingernails over the back of his neck and stepped away as he shot up and whirled around.

“Jesus! Don't do that!” 

“Why is this still going on, Jensen?” she demanded. 

He resettled with a huff and closed his laptop. “I'm not going to apologize. This whole thing is stupid.”

“It's really stupid,” she agreed, leaning back to rest her hip against a table. “You know what's more stupid? Ignoring it like it'll go away.” 

“Everyone knows you can't take what I say seriously,” he whined, crossing his arms petulantly. “There was even an ordinance about it!”

“Which was retracted when no one believed you about the pop-up ads.” She smirked at his sour face. “As you like to remind everyone when they start doubting you.”

“Using my words against me. You're a traitor, Jo.” 

Right on time, the radio clicked on and filled the room with Cecil's voice. Jolene looked over at it, grinning at Cecil's stiff tone as he read the requested mandates from the City Council and the Sheriff's Secret Police. Apparently, the vigorous safety checks of the Sheriff's Secret Police munitions taking place outside Radon Canyon were coming to an end tonight and safety checks on the tactical response vehicles would commence thereafter.

“You don't even have to do it in person,” Jolene wheedled. “Just send a short message. Text it. Post it on their website. Go scream it into the void.”

“You can't apologize for something you're not sorry for.” 

“Oh my god.” Jolene rolled her eyes. “Done. Enjoy the mine shaft, J.” 

“You can tell Pooch that isn't happening!” Jensen shouted. And anything else he said was drowned in the weather and the hands she clasped over her ears as the weather took on a screaming pitch that made her teeth vibrate in her mouth. 

-X-

Clay and Roque were in town all of ten minutes before the entire Situation was spilled to them. They weren't getting any radio chatter not directly involved with the operation or from the VYMGA, so their first introduction was the absolutely horrific weather announcement, a brief passing of the Glow Cloud, and one conversation with an angel that did not exist about Jensen's latest idiocy.

“The only ones on his side are Steve Carlsburg and John Peters, you know, the farmer. Everyone else is pretty firmly on Cecil's. It's straddling the line professionally, but the weather hasn't been the best this week regardless.” One of the Erika's said, but since they didn't officially exit, Clay hadn't made a point to differentiate them. Less likely to cause trouble that way.

“And he hasn't done anything to fix it,” Clay said, sighing and rubbing at his temples. 

“Clay,” Roque said, and Clay looked over to meet his eyes. They'd worked together long enough to read the rest off his face. 

“You can gut him after,” he said, walking even further away from the helicopter and down the sidewalk to their ground base. 

“I'm holding you to that one, Clay,” Roque said, a hitch in his step that was manic and morbid delight. “Fucker gets a week in the shaft for making me have to deal with it in the first place. And a knife to the kidneys on his way out the door.” 

“Whatever works for you, Roque.” Jensen didn't need his kidneys anymore than the rest of them, and it was unlikely he'd bleed out before getting stitched back up.

That drained some of the energy right out of him, but not enough that he didn't send all the younger officers fleeing when they entered the sporting goods store. Clay followed along in his wake, content to let Roque have the first go and likely not have to deal with it at all.

“Jensen! Why the fuck did the weather today make my nose bleed?” Roque shouted. 

Jensen twitched, a wide smile racing over his face as he closed his laptop and jumped out of his seat. He had his hands up defensively and backed away as Roque approached.

“Sugarpop! You're back!” Jensen put one of the tables between them, obviously trying to make his way to the door and out of knife range. Clay cut off that route by closing the door behind him as he entered, leaning back against it and relaxing. 

“J, I have spent a week taking pot shots at little green men with guns twice their size and I didn't get so much as a hangnail. I am in town all of five minutes and I had to go through three rolls of gauze before the bleeding stopped.” Roque rubbed his nose pointedly, the other hand slipping behind his back to pull out that awfully large and purple-tinted blade they'd liberated off the invaders.

“Really?” Jensen paused, head tilting as he peered over the top of his yellow glasses. “You know, we've been getting reports that only 1 in 70 residents suffered a similar affliction. You might want to get checked out at the hospital to see if you're up to date on your mandated vaccinations.”

Roque tossed the knife at Jensen, missing him by only centimeters as Jensen yelped and ducked what would have otherwise been a knife to the face. The knife buried itself in one of the tables, startling one of the other officers in the room. 

“Jensen, why the hell did you think a community meeting was the place to bring up the Scientist's double? The one everyone else in the town refuses to acknowledge? And then to insinuate that the Scientist was the evil double?” Clay asked, not moving from his place even as Roque leapt at Jensen, using the distraction Clay provided to pin him to the floor.

“Yeah, J, why the hell did you taunt Cecil in public about the Scientist?” Roque asked, pressing Jensen's face to the floor and rubbing it roughly back and forth. Jensen flailed, trying to buck Roque off, but the knife pressed over his kidneys made him stop.

“Everyone ignored the double. Even Cecil ignored the double.” Clay pushed off the door and crouched by Jensen's head. “Why the hell didn't you?” 

Whatever Jensen was trying to say was muffled as Roque ground his face even harder into the floor, the edges of his glasses digging into his face. Clay glanced up at Roque and nodded, the other man scowling as he let Jensen raise his head but didn't move the knife. 

“Well?” 

Jensen sighed, eyes darting around them before he calmed. “Okay. Fine. I was going to ignore him. Even knowing how horrifically awful that could go considering how Sheriff's double renamed himself Max and headed for the hills to StrexCorp. Not like that isn't coming back to bite us in the ass or anything. So who'd know what Scientist's double would do?” 

“The man nearly died facing miniature invaders at the bowling alley, Jensen.” 

“He also figured out how to close and re-open all those portals that dropped those kraken-like beings of unimaginable horror on that Girl Scout meeting. If Aisha hadn't been the hosting den mother, they probably wouldn't have earned their Maim and Remains badges. Most girl don't get those until they're Ambassadors!” Jensen wiggled under Roque's bulk but another knife prod ended that.

“The point, Jensen,” Clay said, nodding to Roque. The man rubbed Jensen's face against the floor again, letting up with a grin at Jensen's garbled protest. 

“Why are we ignoring the double of a man who can understand, disrupt, and then reverse-engineer portals to Lovecraftian nightmare worlds?” Jensen demanded, voice coming out slightly muffled since his face was still squashed into the ground. 

Clay frowned, narrowed his eyes at Jensen, ad then lifted his eyes to meet Roque's. He jerked his head and Roque grudgingly got off Jensen, pocketing his knife and striding over to the table to pull out the alien-purple one. Jensen rolled onto his back and stuck his tongue out at Roque's back.

Clay clapped a hand on his shoulder, briefly pinning him to the floor again. “You were saying?” 

“Well,Sheriff's double Max weaseled his way into StrexCorp's bosom, authorizing who knows what against who knows who with who knows what knowledge. And StrexCorp systems are like megalodons with tentacles and laser-guided rockets. I can't get to the good stuff without sacrificing some of my precious babies. Not good shit, Clay.” Jensen paused. “That's only the Sheriff's double. The Scientist's double? No one knows what the man can do because we haven't been paying him any attention.” 

That was a good point. That was a worryingly good point. 

“So you've been paying attention.” 

“Not technically,” Jensen said, “Just only in the sense that I have been paying a certain amount of attention to our double comparable to the times that I've been to the dog park.” 

Which was as much attention as he paid to the Brownstone Spire. There hadn't been a hooded figure lurking anywhere on the premise when he and Roque had arrived, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Watching. 

Waiting for Jensen to leave and take him.

It had happened before.

“And?” 

“The man is stealthier than the Faceless Old Woman.” Jensen heaved a huge sigh, stretching out into an awkward starfish. “I've got a whole lot of turned away screen captures on the CCTV, no evidence of hide or hair in any place of business, even though Big Rico's claims he's always in for his slice, which is also a violation of the 'Ignore Double' mandate bs, and every single Erika suddenly has business elsewhere when I try to ask them.” 

“And you've been letting Cecil stew in his resentment for what purpose?” 

“I'm hoping he'll eventually crack and put some kind of claim on the man. He did it for the Scientist. Why not for the man's double?” 

Which made a certain type of sense. As the Voice of Night Vale, the interest Cecil had in certain figures, businesses, and objects had a way of becoming entrenched in the town. Whether for good or for ill, what Cecil reported had a tendency to become. His predecessor had a similar ability. If Cecil would give the man a designation, cosmic right would have a way to make it so. 

Similar to how Clay was starting to hear 'Deputy' hissed among the officers. Sheriff was a lofty position and one Clay couldn't hope to swing until the current Sheriff either joined the whispering forest or ascended to join the Council. Once Cecil started to call him Deputy, it would become real. 

And if Cecil gave the double a name, a title, anything they could use to ground the man in their world, they could watch the man.

-X-

Aisha heard about the Situation from the Scientist only minutes after Clay and Roque were getting the story out of Jensen. He didn't look at her while he told the story, but she could forgive that since he wa analyzing one of the weapons she'd liberated off the invaders of Radon Canyon. 

“Why couldn't you kill him?” she asked once he was done, settling to lean against his desk. She watched his eyes flick to the window, the reflection on the glass only showing the darkened upper corner of the building they rented for lab space. But she wasn't stupid. 

The double was somewhere in the building, if not the room, watching and listening. 

The Scientist didn't answer until he had a program running on his computer and the purple-tinted knife locked in a lead box. He turned in his chair and stared her in the eyes. 

She could see why Cecil liked him. He approached things directly. 

“I have a twin and I had no desire to know how it would feel to murder him,” the Scientist said, face still calm. 

“It wouldn't have been murder exactly,” she said, remembering how her double had come at her. There hadn't been a chance to reason with her. Only a knife glinting in the dark and a lucky stumble that missed her neck. 

“Unlike the others in town, my double never attacked me. I'm sure I was in his sights far longer than I felt comfortable being. I'm sure that it was only chance and knowledge of my thought process and being that spared me a bullet through my temple.” 

Aisha nodded, glancing around the room and freezing as she noticed the open door on the other end of the room that hadn't been open when she'd entered.

No one else was in the room. 

The Scientist stopped and reached out, his hand covering her shoulder and she noticed the red sight hovering exactly at the joint of her left shoulder. 

“Now. Are you here on behalf of your organization for anything other than data analysis?” The Scientist asked, tendrils of long hair dropping into his face. He was smiling. 

“My questions about your double were purely of a personal nature,” she said slowly, letting her eyes slide to the dark figure that crept into the shadow of the door, only noticeable by the glint of the scope. “The weather has been terrible lately and I wanted to know why.” 

The Scientist flustered, the sight dropped off her shoulder, and the shadow slunk into the room. She'd expected an identical copy of the Scientist, as her own double had been exactly that right down to the tattoo. Instead, there was no graying hair at his temples, glasses perched on his nose, or lines on his face from smiling, laughing, frowning, or generally showing any remote sign of human expression.

He stopped at the Scientist's shoulder and stared down at her. The rifle was slung low but she had no illusions that she'd be fast enough to avoid an attack. 

“What do I have to do with the weather?” the Scientist asked, glancing up at his double and then down to Aisha. 

“You're dating Cecil. Night Vale adores you. And someone upset them.” She raised a brow at his continued befuddled expression, but the double shrugged and suddenly he had their attention. 

The Scientist held his eyes and a wordless conversation took place across from her. The double didn't say anything so it was fascinating to watch the Scientist understand and respond with his own twitches and shrugs that meant far greater. 

“You already have a twin so discovering another copy of yourself wasn't shocking in the least, was it,” she said, drawing them out of their silent conversation. 

“More like an alternate self than a copy,” the Scientist said, distractedly replying as the double twitched his rifle and the Scientist placed a cautious hand back on her shoulder. “Imagine an alternate world to ours that is far crueler than our own. The Wastelands, as we've taken to calling them. To them, we are the weakness that's been bred out. They are far more threatened by us because we are such a foreign variable. You cannot quantify an act of kindness.” 

Why the Scientist had been spared suddenly had less to do with the double's unexpected behavior and more to do with sweet treats, cups of tea or coffee, and possibly the very rifle the double had slung over his shoulder. He may have been hesitant to defend himself with violence, but he'd disarmed the double with kindness which could be far crueler. 

“Officer Jensen's legitimate concern about the dangers of my double caused Night Vale's weather reports.” The Scientist paused, backtracking to earlier to when he'd broken down Cecil's irritation and protectiveness about the Town Hall meeting. “I didn't realize Cecil had that amount of sway.” 

“When I came to this town, I fully expected all the bizarre mission reports we'd received to be bunk. Wild over-reactions. And then it rained dead animals and I lost control of my mind and body to a sentient glowing cloud. I nearly wandered into the dog park following a lead and only stopped because a pack of plastic bags armed with vicious teeth crossed the street being pursued by three police officers in balaclava and tree branches.” Aisha stood taller, straightened her shoulders and felt a lick of pride that the double was immediately reassessing her and adjusting his rifle. 

She'd killed her double. She hadn't lost any sleep over it, either.

“The one thing I didn't have any doubt over was the warning about the voice on the radio. They call him the Voice of Night Vale. And when he speaks, Night Vale listens.”

“You're not referring to the townspeople.” 

“It's sentient in some way. This whole region. We've learned to watch and listen and wait. Sometimes, we can anticipate things before they happen. Sometimes, we're too late. Most of the time, we listen to the radio and see if we can influence things one way or the other.” She shrugged, hitching her hip against the Scientist's desk and crossing her arms. “We've thought about influencing you because you can influence Cecil. But this week has obviously chased that idea off.” 

“Because Cecil's weather reports are a response to a harmless inquiry and you've extrapolated far greater responses to any actual danger.” 

“Do you remember that civilization under the bowling alley that nearly killed you? Not a threat any longer, as I understand it.” 

“But that was-” 

“Night Vale protecting its own interests. But it's a sentient town, not an actual human even if it has chosen a vessel to speak for it. So it has no idea about our morals and humanity. Only that it needs some things so it can spare some others.” 

“You're suggesting things that your organization doesn't actually believe. Otherwise, we'd be swarming with your lot.” 

“They're not here risking their lives to get a decent sandwich,” Aisha said. 

-X-

Jensen watched the cameras in town when there was down time in the department. He had access to everything they'd legally wired through the town and many more cameras he'd mounted on his own for personal observation. He watched all the best spots in town from his desk and that was how he'd stumbled on the double. 

He'd thought it was Carlos, at first, and then he'd seen the rifle. They'd issued several arms to the scientists after they'd settled down, though he'd doubted any of them would ever be used. Jensen was more likely to bring his tablet than his gun on a call, but he'd reinforced it with a titanium shell so he could legally use it as a blunt object on the job. Living in Night Vale without a weapon was a suicide attempt.

He'd seen the scientists trying to clear out wheat and wheat by-products with cooking pans and tongs. They'd done it, but not until several of them had to be carried off to the hospital.

So when he'd ran the face he could barely make out on the man with the rifle and it had been a match to Carlos, Jensen did some digging.

The day their doubles appeared had been panicked. They'd sprang from nowhere, vicious and unreasonable and they'd focused on their counterparts with single-minded determination. They were doubles, but they weren't copies. Jensen's double had a face full of beard, goggles instead of glasses, and never once looked for a camera even though he'd disabled one of the locks to get into his home. Jensen's double had been built like a wartank and they'd broken most of Jensen's apartment before he'd poisoned the man with his box of Wheaties. 

He'd helped clear out Jenna's home, even though he couldn't watch as Emma's double suffocated under Jenna's hands. Then he'd joined with the rest of his team and they'd swept through town, claiming bodies and gunning down the unhinged doubles of their neighbors. 

He hadn't kept track of all the bodies they'd burned. 

It was a mistake. 

Carlos's double was hyper-vigilant to observation, so the one picture was all he'd had. When he'd brought the issue up at the Town Hall, it had been with legitimate concern. He hadn't lied to Clay about that. 

The digging he'd done on Carlos thereafter had been informative. He'd learned Carlos had a fraternal twin, named Esmeralda, who'd undergone gender reassignment therapy and legally changed his name to Oscar the same year Carlos earned his PhD. They stayed in contact when Carlos moved to Night Vale. Oscar looked strikingly like Carlos, at least in all the Facebook and Instagram pictures. 

He could understand hesitating to kill someone who looked like a person you loved. Carlos the Scientist would have tried diplomacy first, and somehow, he'd gotten lucky. 

But that luck could run out at any time. 

And someone who could ghost through town without ever reappearing on Jensen's web made him incredibly nervous. 

And short of replicating Carlos's approach which had to have been similar to luring in a feral cat, he pulled every trick he could think of to engineer a random ecounter. Jensen bought a few drones, tied a camera around a stray cat's neck, and tried to butter up Old Woman Josie and the Faceless Old Woman with Jenna's cookies. 

There wasn't a way to hide from either woman that Jensen knew.

But they could apparently be counter-bribed.

The kitty cam got some fuzzy footage of a man with weathered hands, usually wielding a can of tuna fish or strips of chicken. 

The drones were shot out of the sky, though not all by the double. The NRA had some points system developed with high scores before Jensen lost all his drones.

He wasn't making progress with surveillance, but he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty either. 

He had Clay's dubious blessing to scout out the double and possibly engage if the double was amiable. The double could probably recognize him at this point, so Jensen didn't make an effort to blend in. He dressed how he usually did on his off hours, bright lurid colors that only Cecil ever appreciated, and walked down Main Street to get a coffee to go.

And ten minutes later, when the screaming started, the coffee shop ground to a stop as they waited for something to happen. When nothing did, service resumed, Jensen pulled out his phone to scroll through updates on the Night Vale servers, and the radio, which had been playing the numbers broadcast, blared klaxons and ritualistic and vaguely reptilian chanting.

People stampeded past the coffee shop, a few ducking inside and breathing heavily. 

“Parade,” one of them said, and Jensen recognized one of the radio interns at the back of the group, holding the door closed with a manic grin.

“Odd time of the year for that.” Vanessa, or so her name tag read, continued to hand over plastic cups of iced coffee and bags of scones to the high school girls ahead of Jensen in line.

“My usual, please, and a dozen toffee crunch chocolate cookies.” Jensen grabbed the counter as the building shook in an explosion. Vanessa grabbed the glass cookie display and the tip jar before it could shatter on the ground. Jian handed him the monstrous large chocoate-coffee-ice drink fluffed with whipped topping and a still warm bag of cookies as the ground settled under them. 

“Are you going to check on that?” The radio intern glanced up at him as he stepped nearer to the door. Jensen hesitated, looking at the treats in his hands and then at the people still streaming past the door. Smoke billowed after them, and he could just make out the faintest purple-green distortion in the sky where the lights over the Arby's usually lingered. 

“Haven't been called in yet,” he said, settling in one of the tables near the window to watch. “Anything interesting?” 

“Something that looked like the Eye of Sauron with tentacles came out of a portal with things like bats, slugs, sand worms, and orc knockoffs with purple knives,” she reported. 

The invaders of Radon Canyon had apparently not been beaten back, after all. 

His phone started to ring, Roque's tone-deaf rendition of “War” by Edwin Starr slurring around the hushed conversations. Jensen grinned and ignored it, opening the bag of cookies and stuffing his face. He wiggled his eyebrows at the door, and the intern pushed it open for him, instantly barring the exit as soon as he cleared the doorway. 

Jensen worked up into a steady run, clutching his treats and following the sounds of screams. 

The portal was the easiest to spot, a bruise in the otherwise glittering void that swallowed this side of town on occasion. The station was out in force, putting down creatures of every size with zealous glee. Residents were mostly running for cover, though not all. 

The hooded figures Jensen tried not to linger on phased though the invaders, often causing spontaneous combustion but mostly melting whatever they passed through into gelatinous puddles of gray and green. Somewhere, in the far distance behind the Arby's, the road, the various buildings and scrubland, the Erikass were glowing like a white dwarf star. 

Jensen fell into cover beside one of the officers, setting down his drink to steal one of the man's guns and fire blindly at the invaders. Bullets worked, but the Mt. Doom Eye passed overhead and the invaders recharged, rising out of the muck of their dead bodies with the squelching sound of organs and bones separating in a wet slide. 

“I'm betting that this is the Boss Battle,” Jensen said to Pooch as the man took cover beside him. 

Pooch eyed Jensen's drink, the bag of cookies tucked under his crouched form, and the negligent way he wasn't watching where he was firing. 

“Gonna share?” he asked, handing Jensen his tablet, his gun, and his badge that authorized lethal force.

“Depends. Odds I'm spending a night in the mine shaft?” 

“You're out here now, aren't you?” Pooch took his cookie and leaned over the car, taking delicate bites as he played look out. “Ideas?” 

“You got the thing?” 

“Always,” Pooch said, levering his gun up and taking out one of the sand worm monsters. It fell heavily onto several little slug things, the entire mess wiggling together as they tried to reform. “That's disgusting.” 

“Almost turns you off jell-o,” Jensen commented, watching the process with rapt focus. He brought up his tablet and took a few pictures, scrunching his face in disgust as the sand worm reformed only partially done, leaving its internal organs exposed. He could see something pulsing inside like a heart beat. “Gross.” 

He picked out another cookie and held it between his teeth as Pooch hustled him further down the street.

“Ready?” Pooch asked. 

“Time to sparkle, motherfucker,” Jensen breathed, holding Pooch's gun as the man pulled out their latest and greatest. Pooch lit the handcraft fuse they'd threaded through the little plastic jar of contraband StrexCorp hair remover, donated by an unaware Jolene, and chucked it into the center of the monsters. 

Jensen handed back the gun and both of them leaned around the car to watch. 

The resulting explosion threw all the monsters to the ground, some catching fire and dissolving into gray goop that scorched into black smears on the ground. The maimed monsters weren't regenerating, and the plume of smoke turned lavender purple as it curled overhead. 

Jensen reached out and tapped Pooch's fist, handing the man a victory cookie in celebration.

“Got any more?” 

“Why else would it take that long to get to you?” Pooch asked, opening a bag Jensen hadn't noticed, and offered nearly a dozen little jars of hair remover. “Bombardment?” 

“Hells yes,” Jensen said, shoving the tablet in his pocket and his gun down the back of his jeans. The cookies and his drink he transferred to one hand and made grabby motions.

“Take the bag. I've got the rest.” Pooch pushed it over. “You seen Clay or Roque yet?” 

“No,” Jensen said, looping the strap over his shoulder. “Did you bring a radio?” 

“Every channel's just picking up monster chanting and alarms.” Pooch hefted his own bag over his shoulder. “Save some of the cookies for me, Jensen.” 

Jensen hummed and took off, lighting a jar and pitching it to give him and Pooch cover. Lavender smoke hid him long enough to circle around the street and get to the people pinned between a sand worm and a flock of bat monsters. 

He shot a few of the bats out of the sky and chucked another jar into the mouth of the sand worm as it came at him. The people scrambled for cover somewhere behind the line of fire and Jensen stopped long enough to watch the sand worm explode and collapse into ashes. 

It was a beautiful thing to see. 

He yelped as a purple knife buried itself next to his shoulder, making him flinch back and flail to cover. Apparently, the monsters were just the advanced forces, and the bulk of the monster army filed down the street in neat lines. They swept over cars, people, their own fallen dead, flinging knives and firing something that took chunks out of whatever it hit. Like a concentrated concussive blast to the chest. Several officers splattered like water balloons, chunks littering the street and the ear of a nearby officer landed next to Jensen's knee with a plop. 

His stomach rolled, his breath stuttered, and his mind blanked out. Jensen heard himself breathing, fast, sharp, and high, but couldn't do anything about it. The orcs advanced, a few falling to some of Pooch's handcrafted bombs, but they kept coming. The Mt. Doom Eye tentacle monster hovered behind the front lines, right over a gold sand worm and a pair of bird-looking monsters that breathed some shimmering blue fog. 

“An army. From outer space.” 

The unfamiliar voice snapped Jensen out of his daze. 

Aisha and Carlos hovered behind him, Aisha with a gun and what looked like a rocket launcher crossed over her back, and Carlos listening to a radio through headphones and holding a laser pointer in his other hand. Aisha handed over a bag to Carlos, who nearly dropped it caught unaware. 

“Uh, hi?” he tried, hurriedly moving out of the way as Aisha stepped out of cover, lowered the rocket launcher, and braced to fire. 

Several monsters converged on them, and someone somewhere much higher than any of them were cleared the way for her, felling sand worms, slugs, and bats with precise shots. Carlos, amazingly violent for everything Jensen had ever seen or read about the man, threw a Molotov cocktail to burn the remains before they could reform.

“Might want to cover your ears,” Aisha said, firing right into the heart of the army. 

The gold sand worm shrieked, listing to the side and snapping angrily at one of the bird monsters. Its skin rippled as it absorbed the blast, but the lines of orcs around it weren't getting back up. 

Jensen gave her an appreciative look, eyes trailing over her from head to toe. He felt his stomach flutter as she pulled out another rocket and fell into cover to reload. 

“I want to have your fire-starter babies,” he said, offering her a cookie and nearly entirely serious. 

Aisha took the cookie and ignored the rest. 

That was fine. They didn't encourage humor at the vague, yet menacing government agency, as far as he knew. 

“Officer Jensen, what were those fire bombs you were using?” Carlos asked, moving one of the ear cuffs aside. 

“StrexCorp hair removing cream. Highly volatile if you tweak it a little,” he said, offering one of the jars for inspection. “And you can just call me Jensen. Sorry I said you're an evil clone capable of nuking us while we sleep.” 

Carlos waved off the apology, opening the jar and then resealing it and passing it back. 

“How many more jars do you have?” 

“Ten? Yeah, ten,” Jensen said, opening the bag and doing a quick inventory. “Why?” 

“If we clear a path to the gold worm, can you light the bag and get it to swallow it?” Carlos asked, eyes drifting out of focus as he pressed a hand to the ear cuff still over his ear. “Someone's translating the creatures' speech to me, and their intelligence suggests that the tentacle monster is the center control. We won't get close enough to it without taking out the big worm first, though.” 

“So if we blow it up-” 

“They'll either dissolve in our atmosphere, as they are after being exposed to fire, or they'll be pulled back through the portal to their own dimension. How did you get rid of them before?” 

“Mostly? Just shot at them until they crawled back into the hole in space they came out of,” Jensen answered, exchanging a quick look with Aisha. She shrugged and fired at a few bats that started swarming over them. 

“We'll need a less temporary measure,” Carlos said, “Do you think you can do this?” 

“Easy,” Jensen agreed, handing over the bag of cookies. “Watch my stuff? You can have one. Apology cookie.” 

“Sure,” Carlos said, taking the bag with a faint frown. He settled the bag on his thigh, leaning up to look over the car they'd taken shelter behind. “Ready?” 

“I'll cover you, Jensen. Do not stop, understand?” Aisha brought up the rocket launcher, barring her teeth at the aliens. 

“Be careful!” Carlos shouted over Aisha firing the rocker launcher, and Jensen waved back as he crouched low and took off into the blast. He dove behind an overturned car as the rocket exploded into the street, and he didn't wait for them to regroup. 

Jensen ran into the empty hole right in the center of the army, faltering once when someone started taking out the monsters turning on him. Bats fell out of the air overhead and orcs toppled into each other as their heads exploded into gray matter. 

“Plan, Jensen?!” 

Roque and Clay came up on him fast, firing at what Jensen's overhead guardian didn't have a clear shot on. Jensen nodded, not yet breathing hard but would be soon. 

“Just seeing if it's hungry,” Jensen said, glancing over his shoulder to Clay. “You?” 

“You have a cell waiting in the mine shaft. Can't have you miss it,” Clay said, sweeping up Jensen's right to turn around and fire back at the mess they left behind them that was trying to reassemble itself. Pooch, coming out of nowhere, lit the bastards up. 

“Are we doing this or not?” Roque yelled back, wrestling a long purple sword out of one of the fallen orcs and spinning it in his hand. The bat that came at him overhead was sliced in two and neither part was trying to merge with anything. “Huh.” 

“That's good to know now,” Jensen muttered, skipping over slug monsters and narrowing his eyes at the two birds that looked like they were going to get involved soon. Roque and Clay were concerned with the immediate area, trying to get a path, and Pooch was raining fire behind them. Aisha probably wouldn't leave Carlos' side until either the monsters were gone or they'd need to regroup after mission failure. 

Which left Jensen's overhead watcher, who was likely Carlos' double, and someone who'd have no problem just skipping town and leaving them to their deaths if this tanked. 

Chancing it, Jensen raised his hands in familiar call signs. 

One of the birds lost its left wing and crashed to the ground, thrashing and splitting blue haze until it covered the street. 

Worryingly, Jensen's legs started to feel stiffer. Numb. 

Paralytic breath. 

Super. 

Another bullet killed it, but its companion was circling and screeching, rallying the army before flying right at Jensen and his team. 

Jensen scrambled for the gun tucked in the back of his pants, but he wasn't going to get it up in time. Clay and Pooch peppered it, but it never slowed. The gold worm was turning towards them, and the Mt. Doom Eye hovered higher overhead, body starting to flicker and lengthen. The portal loomed above them, greedily eating up the lights over Arby's, the cerulean sky, the far and steady blinking light of that mountain which did not exist and yet-

The bird's head exploded as it breathed a miasma, showering Jensen, Roque, and Clay in gooey remains. Jensen exhaled hard, flickering his fingers in gratitude and taking the lit jar out of Pooch's hands as he came up to burn the bird's body. He dropped it into his bag and ran like hell for the gaping mouth of the gold worm as it dove across the street towards them. 

Orcs fell around him, the bullets from the double picking out a path Jensen had no trouble following. Pooch, Clay, and Roque were struggling behind him but still making progress. 

The gold worm arched higher, mouth splintering open in a roar. 

Jensen swallowed a terrified scream as its breath covered him, hot and wet and the foulest thing he'd ever breathed-

He threw the bag into its mouth and back peddled so hard he smacked into an orc. It grabbed him by the throat, lifted him off his feet, and threw him into a car. 

The windshield shattered under his weight and knocked the breath out of him. His vision whited out and when he blinked back into consciousness, his glasses were cracked. 

The gold worm imploded, purple smoke furiously pouring from its gaping mouth and then even faster as its body unraveled. The Mt. Doom Eye morphed faster, becoming more humanoid and more reptilian together until the end result was a D&D boss. 

The monster lifted its arm and pointed at Jensen, mouth moving but the ringing in his ears wasn't letting him hear his own thoughts let alone whatever it was threatening him with. Roque and Clay were at the edges of his vision, a barricade of orcs between him and them. He could see Pooch's explosions but not the man himself. 

It hurt to breathe, so Jensen gave himself a few minutes to sit on the car before he'd try to make a suicide run to relative safety.

And to watch the red dot on the Boss make little circles over the red glowing amulet on its chest. 

Like a laser pointer at a presentation. 

Like a sniper letting you know you were about to die. 

The amulet exploded.

And gravity went with it. 

The portal, the nightmarish hungry mouth that he couldn't think about or he'd fall into it, flickered at the edges as the white glowing lights of the Erikas pushed it back. The lights that glittered over Arby's like benevolent and omnipresent eyes flared into life once again. The cerulean sky superimposed itself into the same space as the portal. 

The orcs were drawn upwards. The ashes of their dead followed. 

And then the cars and debris started to hover.

Jensen and the car lifted off the street. He fought through the stabbing pain in his ribs to try and roll off the windshield, but the pull already had him. He flailed in the air, throat working as he tried to shout for help. His throat was dry, his breath hitched, and the world spun at the edge of his vision. 

“Jensen!” Clay was yelling for him, and he spotted the man several feet below him. He and Roque were tethered to each other, Clay tucked into Roque's side as the man clutched at a fire hydrant. Pooch was tied to a light pole within reach of them. 

He looked even further down the street to see Aisha and Carlos, the gravity obviously not as drastically different near them as they held onto a car that hovered a few feet off the ground. 

Living in Night Vale was dangerous. Jensen knew that. The one fight he'd ever had with Jenna, the only fight that mattered, was for her to follow her boyfriend across the country and live in quiet and idyllic Eureka. Night Vale killed their parents, who'd never seen their children enter high school, and their only living relative had skipped out of town following a lead on Stonehenge when Jenna was legally old enough to adopt and raise him. Night Vale chewed both of them raw, until Jensen's repeated attempts into the Dog Park had resulted in so many mandatory re-programming sessions he'd never been able to turn his brain off. 

Night Vale loved them. 

Night Vale gave him a Name, a designation, and a purpose he'd never felt he could have. 

Tech Specialist Jensen. 

Night Vale loved him. 

Which was probably why Night Vale saved him.

A hand grabbed his and towed him down. Carlos' double had brown eyes and none of the lines to his face that Carlos did, the lines that made him seem real and kind and strange as only things outside Night Vale were. He closed both hands around Jensen's, using the strap on the rifle to tie them to the barrier on the building roof. The portal pulled the hat off his head as he anchored Jensen, and the rifle followed after it. 

The double watched his face, eyes never once looking away to see the portal pulse and ripple the way that Jensen couldn't ignore. He held Jensen's hand between his own, rough palms, short nails, frightfully tight grip that made his fingers tingle and numb. 

The portal tried to take him with it, tugged his glasses away, clung to his hair. Blood floated away from him as it dripped out his nose. 

And with the same suddenness it appeared, it vanished. 

Gravity reasserted itself, as much as it ever did within Night Vale.

Jensen was weightless, clinging to the double's hand nearly as tightly as the double was wrapped around his. 

And the double's face contorted in effort and pulled them both through the air. 

Jensen's back hit the rough gravel on the rooftop, skidding into a heap not too far away from the man who saved his life. He tilted his head to the side and squinted his eyes, but he could only see the blur of the man, a dark shape against the blue sky and gray barricade. 

“If he didn't drop them, you can have two cookies,” Jensen said, once he felt like he could breathe again. “Apology cookie and a thank you cookie.” 

The man righted himself, coming up on his knees and then onto his feet. Jensen watched the man approach him, but wasn't too concerned. The man saved his life. Unlike every double Jake had seen and met, this man wasn't the terrible thing in the darkness. 

Or he was waiting for the most devastating moment to strike. 

A hand was dropped in front of his face, lingering well after Jensen noticed and stayed still. Tentatively, he reached up and took the double's hand, pulling himself into a sitting position. The double let him hold on until he had inventory of his pains. 

“I'm Jake Jensen.” He turned the brightest grin he could manage up at the blurry face of the double. 

“Cougar.” 

Jensen twitched at the smooth voice, tone and pitch matching Carlos' but vividly different. 

“My name.” The double shrugged and pulled Jensen to standing. He was taller than Cougar and still too close by most people's standards. Close enough to see how expressive his eyes were. How long his hair was. How terrible and striking he looked with a glare. 

Cecil's sudden and complete infatuation was totally understandable if his meeting Carlos was anything like this. 

-X-

There was just enough efficient savagery in Night Vale that Cougar felt at home. He couldn't trust the streets to lead where they promised, houses to exist where they stood, or even the air to be breathable at all times. Snakes lurked in cereal boxes, orange juice disrupted the plane of reality, and hooded figures would stop and watch him with an intensity that never failed to get his back up.

The voice on the radio made things mundane and peeled horror off the town's veneer until it was an oasis. 

Cougar lived in an oasis before he'd been drawn here. He and his brother crafted a little town out of rumor and gasoline, and when they came to raid, he and Hawk mowed them down, took their supplies, and set up for the next trap. It wouldn't have been a long term solution, but would have worked long enough for them to get sufficient supplies to journey to Citadel.

Then Hawk had died and Cougar had stepped from one blood-soaked desert land to one in another reality. He'd had just enough rational thought to hesitate when he'd seen the man with Hawk's face. 

After that, Cougar had waited for the trap to close. 

He thought it had when the monsters fell from the sky and it became clear that someone would need to do a suicide run through a virtual army. The man with Hawk's face had asked without asking, speaking as they did without words and knowing intimately what they needed to do. 

When the tech had gone bravely into the monster's mouth, he'd thought that maybe it had when the portal closed and tried to pull everything with it. Instead, the strap had held and neither he nor the tech had been pulled through.

Now, he was sitting on a bed in a room deep below the ground, flipping through television channels on the flat screen. The last thing he remembered was telling the tech his name. A brief inspection of the room reveled no less than a dozen cameras and microphones, a fully stocked mini refrigerator, a microwave, a flat screen tv, a queen sized bed, a bedside table, a lamp, a digital clock radio flashing twelve and hadn't changed once since he woke up, and a laminated points of interest brochure of local Night Vale. The adjacent bathroom had only a toilet, a sink, and a bathtub, with small bottles of courtesy toiletries lined along the counter. 

He'd stayed in worse places. 

The clock radio picked up the local station, currently playing the sounds of echoing emptiness with commercial breaks, and other than HBO, the tv only played local stations too. 

Cougar had learned much while he was shadowing his double. No variation of Night Vale existed in the Wastelands, but many of the people he'd seen in town, he'd seen on the roads before he and Hawk had settled on building traps to chase rumors of a green land. The two men who'd joined the tech on his suicide run had brushed though town without ever letting Cougar or Hawk know they were there. The woman he'd seen flickering in existence at that house which existed but did not exist was the same woman he'd seen before stepping through the portal, a crown of bones twined in her hair, grease smeared over her forehead, and bloodied mouth in a snarl as she screamed at the sky carrying them all away. 

She was an intern here, apparently, though lost somewhere that was here and wasn't and her voice sometimes carried to his ears on the wind even though no one else could hear her. 

The men who worked the counter at Big Rico's were the same men Hawk had nearly cut down for their car, but it'd been too fast, too powerful for the trap they'd set. They'd screamed all while leaving Hawk behind and Cougar had painted their fleeing end with bullet holes and busted glass. 

They operated a cash register and bellowed to a kitchen staff with that same screeching pitch of stressed metal, pale faces in rictus grins as they took money and handed over greasy plates of pizza. 

The man whose voice lulled this town into calm terror, he was the Speaker of the Citadel, the echoing voice travelers claimed to hear when the world was quiet, the wind not yet a maelstrom, the sand not yet deadly, but promised things like water and food and sleep to those starving for everything. 

His was the voice Hawk claimed to hear on a still night before the sky opened in a firestorm and Hawk broke into pieces across the sand. 

His was the first voice Cougar heard when he woke in this place, granite roof uncomfortable under him and the turquoise sky glittering with a black void at the edge of his vision. And Cougar noticed that the words were twisting the sky into the richest shade of blue he'd ever seen, nearly smothering white and black and blue, and he couldn't breathe as the voice wrapped around him. 

Impatient knocking from behind him ended that thought, and it took him several minutes to realize it was Morse code. 

U-N-D-E-R T-H-E B-E-D

The knocking stopped when he tapped back, but the silence was expectant. He knelt at the edge of the bed and scanned over the lines, pulling up the expertly tucked sheets when he didn't notice anything unusual. He swept everything on the bed off and investigated the exposed mattress, grinning when he found a section had been cut open and stitched back together. 

He ripped the stitches apart, reaching in and pulling out a slim matte black tablet. It lit up when he dragged a finger over the screen, pinging at him with the same expectancy as the silence on the other side of the wall. A little icon was wiggling in place, an old theater movie projector spinning manically until he launched it.

“You found it!” 

The tech's face filled the small tablet screen, wide blue eyes, golden skin, and little yellow glasses slipped to the tip of his nose. Cougar found himself smiling slightly before he focused. 

“I wasn't sure if you knew Morse. Carlos knows all kinds of weird languages and short hand codes, but you're from somewhere else, right, even though you knew when I was signaling to you during the fight. Thanks for that, btw. Pretty sure I would have been sucked into some hentai's tentacle fantasy, and not constentactles, which, eh, not going to say no to exactly-” 

“You're bleeding,” Cougar said, because blood was dripping out of his nose but the tech didn't seem to notice or care.

“What?” The tech interrupted himself, touching his nose with a grimace as he looked at his sticky fingers. “Oh. Yeah. Welcome to the Center for Mind-warping, Brainwashing, and General Mind Fuckery, located in your friendly scenic abandoned mine shaft.” 

Cougar scanned the room again, feeling infinitely more claustrophobic with the lack of windows and the overabundance of cameras. 

“Hey, hey. Don't worry about it. It's all done through subliminal messaging and pheromones in the ventilation system nowadays. A few years ago, that's when it was all waterboarding and sensory deprivation and scheduled beatings. This is just from spending too much time breathing the recycled air down here.” 

“Your city allows this?” Cougar asked, dragging the duvet over and stuffing it under his legs. He didn't have his hat, but the edge of the bed and the basic lighting cast a light shadow over his face and reduced the glare on the tablet's screen.

“It's Night Vale. Welcome, I guess. Different than where you're from?” 

Cougar shrugged. Not that different.

“Bet the aliens were a surprise.” 

“Eh. Little weird.” Definitely not as strange as the man in tan, carrying a briefcase in one hand and a slick silver knife in the other. Strange ragged shadows followed the man across the ground and over the edges of the buildings, and when they'd passed over Cougar, he'd blacked out with visions of a greyed world and beings with gashed mouths and too many sharp teeth. 

He woke craving warm meat.

“We'll be down here a while. Once they figure out we're not a threat to the general populace, they'll let us out. Well. They'll dump us somewhere in town.” The tech grinned with sudden interest. “Thought about what you're going to do in town?” 

Cougar shrugged, but the tech continued on anyway. 

“Carlos probably won't mind if you live with him, but gainful employment is one of the mandatory citizen requirements for new residents. It doesn't need to be a monetary gain, but Night Vale would like for everyone to continue forward with their lives, even if it means transcending this plane and joining the forest. You know not to go there right?” 

Cougar nodded. “Heard the whispers.”

“Good. We get a new acre every few months, usually people too curious for their own good. Not that I've ever been, but the trees don't mind drones.” The tech's eyes widened behind his glasses, subtly twisting new lines onto his face. Little creases at the corners of his eyes. Slight flare of his nostrils. Wet gleam of his upper lip as he licked it. “ – always need new guns, sure, but, think about it, helicopter!” 

Cougar'd lost the thread somewhere, but it was just as interesting to watch how his face shifted under his voice. The yellow glasses tinted his cheeks as he moved, gesturing with his whole body as he mimed having three heads, trying to coil his arms like a snake. Every breath he took changed something subtle and neat and made him more vibrant. 

“Cougar?” 

“You work for the police.” Cougar lifted his eyes to the tech's, finding it harder to look anywhere else than right at the tablet. Their radio hosted a siren, beguiling and sweet and awesome, but Cougar could take himself apart enough to not listen to the same trap his brother had fallen for. 

But the tablet housed something worse and every second he didn't throw it across the room, he was tangling himself more and more into it. 

“Carlos?”

“I'll use Cougar. Or it'll be confusing.” He relaxed into the side of the bed. “You have a helicopter?” 

All other smiles paled to this one, and it was so much more dangerous than the voice on the radio. Any thoughts he had of leaving just weren't appealing anymore. 

“Prettiest blue in the sky and you can always bully Padilla into giving rides.” 

“I get to keep my rifle. No blow darts. And the hat is not negotiable.” 

“What hat-” 

Cougar reached to his left, keeping his eyes of the tablet and pulled his hat out of his shadow. It shaded his face as soon as he placed it on his head, and he was nothing again and he could hear everything, the voice on the radio, the girl living out of this plane of reality, the angels hymning in a chorus, the chittering of the other nothings, not gone but not able to speak or touch anymore. 

And still it was as silence to the cheerful laugh tinning through the tablet. 

“You're going to kill us all in our sleep, aren't you?” 

“Not all,” Cougar said, and it sent Jensen laughing again, clearly still able to understand despite the darkness wrapped over Cougar that blanked out everything but his body language. Cougar let himself smile back and settled in to wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Drabble - no planned sequel. Inspired by the lovely idea of Oscar Jaenada being Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez and Carlos the Scientist. And the Losers infiltrating the Sheriff's Secret Police and slowly changing it out of a complete fascist state, while Aisha works for the vague, yet menacing government agency, lining themselves up to take down Max, now of Strex Corp. I may eventually convince myself of a sequel, because i genuinely like this whole concept.


End file.
